1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hard disk system that uses a hard disk drive (HDD) as a portable recording medium, and to a hard disk unit and a conversion unit of such a hard disk system.
2. Description of Related Art
An HDD can store therein a large quantity of data and enables high speed access to the stored data. For this reason, in an information processing apparatus such as a personal computer and the like, the HDD plays an important role as an external storage apparatus. In recent years, taking advantage of such merits of HDDs, HDDs are beginning to be used as a bulk storage apparatus for storing image data, music data and the like even in such fields as AV devices and the like.
Conventionally, information processing apparatuses use built-in HDDs, external HDDs that are connected through a connection cable to the body of the apparatus, and the like. Recently, as more information processing apparatuses have become mobile, portable HDDs that can be carried freely have been proposed (for example, see Japanese Patent Registration No. Hei-6-66111).
In addition, among such portable HDDs, those commonly referred to as portable hard disks are already commercially available. Specifically, in such a portable hard disk, the connection between a host device and itself is made an interface that complies with the USB (Universal Serial Bus) standard. Thus, in this portable hard disk, an AC adaptor is unnecessary and power can be supplied through the power line of the USB interface. Also, this portable hard disk is designed such that data can be easily written and read simply by connecting it to the host device with a connection cable, without having to configure a driver.